Our 14 year old Toyota Avensis has been a star! Also I eavesdrop on a conversation in the Toyota garage and muse about running costs.
This last year we sailed past the 100,000 mile mark as almost every car I’ve owned has done. Over Christmas it passed the MOT test with flying colours and so I treated it to a new battery. Apparently the ORIGINAL 14 YEAR OLD battery was only charging to 80% so I decided to treat it to a new one. Apparently 14 years is pretty good for a battery these days.
While I was in the Toyota garage, I overheard a conversation with another customer….
“We have checked your car and found a few problems, would you like us to fix them?”
“Uh?” grunts the customer
“One of the headlights didn’t work. The technician discovered the bulb was missing. Would you like us to put a new one in?”
The customer looked somewhat offended. Next this changed into a kind of awkwardness and he muttered something about that being okay. The member of staff continued listing defects to which the customer pretended to look surprised but reluctantly agreed to the various repairs. I pretended not to listen.
As you know we are frugal in our very early retirement. We took the decision to ‘make do’ with old cars instead of managing the expense of newish cars. So far this is paying off.
The Toyota might be old, a bit dull and boring but it is very, very cost effective. One remarkable thing is the depreciation in value – this is about £100 a year so far. Servicing costs about £300 a year, road tax £245 and fuel consumption averages 45mpg. Our Honda Jazz is even cheaper and does 53mpg.
I intend to keep the car for as long as possible. The Toyota garage tell me it is good for another 100,000 miles bar any accidents etc. One spanner in the works might be the cost and availability of fuel in a few years forcing us towards an electric car. I hope not, I’d quite like to keep it for many, many years to come.
Isn’t there something about being contented, to stop chasing after the latest model? Is that more cool, or not?
Apologies to subscribing readers – I know the post’s photo isn’t coming through by email. I’m not sure why, I can’t see anything wrong so I’ll have to ponder that and search the WordPress forum.
As you might recall, I’m the owner of a now 15 year-old 150,000 mile Merc. Sure, the S Class is MB’s prestige model, so, yes, it was a pretty good car to start with. My point is, like your Toyota, it does everything I need a car to do, thus planning to keep it to 250,000. The only caveat is an extension to restrictions being placed on where I can drive it (basically emission zones), or if it suddenly develops issues that are really expensive (£2k plus) to resolve. At that point I’ll look for a hybrid.
Thanks Anthony. You’ve got a cool car there and probably from the era when they were extremely well built. I’ve heard some MB cars were really built to last a long time.
Just as a matter of interest, do you use E5 or E10 petrol? And why? I have a blog post brewing…..